Curb habit of filming, posting videos of accidents

The report on Nov 19 ("S'porean tourists rescue Icelander from overturned car") warmed my heart.

The heroic and selfless act of the Singaporean tourists is indeed commendable.

However, the report stated that one of the four Singaporeans in the party filmed the rescue - I assume with a smartphone - and the clip was later posted on Facebook.

That caused me to wonder about the time spent shooting the video, which lasted 1min 34sec. Wouldn't an extra pair of hands have been helpful in the rescue?

An accident that results in an overturned car is definitely a life-or-death situation. Surely, one's first instinct should be to help, not whip out a camera to record the event.

In this day of the ubiquitous smartphone, we must be mindful of our actions. Not only do we run the risk of intruding into people's privacy, we can also unwittingly become unhelpful bystanders if all we care about is to quickly capture incidents, just so we can post these on our Facebook pages.

Michael Loh Toon Seng (Dr)

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